Oracle has announced the release of version 12.2.5 of Oracle E-Business Suite. This demonstrates Oracle’s continued commitment to Oracle E-Business Suite’s longevity alongside Oracle’s Business Cloud.

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.X continues to represent a good “stepping stone” to the Oracle Cloud, because both applications share the same middleware configuration. This means any future upgrades, coexistence or re-implementation initiatives should be easier, whilst also providing an amount of comfort and control by remaining on the well understood and familiar E-Business Suite platform.

Upgrading to 12.2.5

Upgrading to 12.2.5 is only possible from release 12.2.X – 12.2.5 is a cumulative patch on top of Release 12.2 but it can be applied online, i.e. without downtime. However, for customers currently on 12.1.3 or lower, an upgrade to 12.2 would be required before applying 12.2.5.

What’s new in 12.2.5?

In addition to multiple bug fixes, key changes introduced by Oracle include the following.

For the Finance User

Some changes in Procurement to improve efficiency and usability, such as the ability to share smart forms amongst operating units, the ability to set AME approval at Document Type/operating unit level and one time addresses are now stored so they can be re-used if needed.

Projects now has extra flexibility, allowing changes to un-costed expenditure batches and to PA periods if they have been entered incorrectly.

For the HCM User

Self Service HR now includes Simplified User Interface (UI) Menus, and the ability for Managers to view and perform actions for multiple assignments via Org Chart or Talent Profile.

Enhancements to the Payroll Dashboard introduce monitoring and payroll analytics, providing a deeper view of employee payroll data. Performance improvements aid efficient and accurate payroll processing resulting in reduced time and cost. New Costing of Payment reports detail payment costing in the form of summary, details, or cost code level breakdown over a date range or specified costing process.

OTL Integration with HR Absences has been extended to include those with OTLR features enabled.

For the DBA

Enhancements to the Applications DBA Online Patching (“adop”) tool provide an enhanced interface that eases the use of the tool for the DBA. In addition, Oracle has added an “adopmon” facility that can monitor the patching process and enable the DBA to delve into the workings of a patch in more detail. Finally, a “–validate” flag has been added to adop to verify a system’s “readiness” for patch application before a patch is applied.

Weblogic Performance Improvements – Weblogic has been furnished with a number of additional performance configuration parameters such as “DserverType” and “deploy_portlet” which configure the environment for specific workloads and faster start-up times.

Dual filesystem mode in cloning – previously it was necessary to clone the patch and run filesystems independently, but in 12.2.5 it has now become a standard clone process to configure the two areas in a single clone process.

In Conclusion

Oracle is continuing development of the E-Business Suite stack and is providing new functionality in this area. As such Oracle E-Business Suite remains a viable alternative to a full migration to the Oracle Business Cloud or may be used as part of a long term co-existence strategy.